How I Work

I tend to go at my work as a writer in a pretty straightforward way: I’ll have a vague idea for a book, and I’ll sit at my desk and hammer it on my now rather geriatric Mac, beginning at the beginning, and ending at the end, with a vague middly bit in the middle. I don’t really make notes, or do character sketches, or draw up elaborate plot diagrams, with coloured pens and post-it notes. I regard most of those sorts of things as displacement activities, designed to put off the actual act of creation.

I try to write a thousand words a day. When I’m on a roll I might hit 3000. When I’m in one of my periodic troughs, I might be lucky to squeeze out a couple of hundred, and they’ll all be terrible. In either case, I’m aided by endless cups of tea, made mouth-puckeringly strong. I’ve been told that I groan, and chunter mild obscenities as I type, as though being subjected to low-grade torture.

When things get really bad I go and work at the British Library, where I’m both soothed and stimulated by the gentle susurrus of a thousand yellowed pages being turned, and the soft, musty smell of aged academics, snoozing, even if the muffins in the café are a constant source of disappointment.

Although I generally just sit and type out my words, when I’m away from my desk I also make random scribblings in my notebooks – the inklings of future jokes, half-formed ideas, bits of overheard dialogue. I tend to have several of these on the go at the same time, as I have a habit of losing/misplacing them. This can add a pleasing randomness to the whole business, with odd juxtapositions and potentially creative couplings. But usually it’s just annoying. I use Moleskine notebooks, not because they’re any better than the alternatives, but because they make me feel like a proper writer, and not some inadequately-medicated schizophrenic, taking dictation from the mad voices jabbering in his head. Which, at times, is what the writer’s life is like.